Saturday, May 25, 2013

The day of the Boston Bombing

People have been asking me what it was like to be in Boston
during the bombings

The bombing occurred on April 15. It is now May 25 almost a
full month and a half later, but due to requests I’ll describe my experiences.

Let me say, just for the record, I hope this does not sound
like some vain attempt at self-grandization. It’s not. It’s just an attempt to
put things on record and answer some questions. Boston’s a big city. The city
went through this and I had no real role in the events. In fact, when I look
back on the events, and people probe asking me for details of how I felt, I’m
afraid one thing that I feel is that I should have a bigger role of some kind
in what took place, but, alas, that’s not where fate put me.

In Boston there are about two dozen, small, for-profit “Come
to Boston and learn English” schools aimed primarily at foreign students. On the
afternoon of April 15, 2013, I was working as a substitute teacher at one of
those schools monitoring two women while they took a practice IELT test. (The
IELT test is the British equivalent of the American TOEFL test. It is used to
assess a foreign students’ level of English prior to their admission into a
college.)

The classroom had a beautiful view overlooking Boston
commons, the large park in downtown Boston.

In front of the classroom was the main area of the school, and
this included a large lounge with couches and a wide screen TV.

While giving the test, I noticed that a group of students
were watching the TV intently. (There were windows between the classroom and
the lounge and hall of the school.)

At one point, I stepped outside for some reason (I don’t
remember what) and discovered that several students were intently watching the
TV. The TV news said that an explosion had taken place at the finish area of
the Boston Marathon and showed the same clips repeatedly. Emotional
announcers said repeatedly that they had very few details and showed the same
clips again and again while promising to release more details as they learned them.

I was not impressed with the reportage, I saw. It shared
little information and seemed intent on exciting the viewer at a time when cool
heads were needed.

If I recall correctly, I tried to point out to the students that the news was
repeating the same clips of carnage, an explosion and an ambulance being loaded
again and again. But they were quite concerned, which is only natural.

I went back into the classroom and one of the women taking
the test, sensing tension outside, asked me what had happened. I told her that
I’d tell her in fifteen minutes and that she should focus on finishing her test
and I’d explain everything then.

When they finished their tests, I told them to look out the
window and ask me what they saw and what was different and to notice how the
people were acting.

They did and reported that they could see nothing different
and that people in Boston Commons were acting the same.

“Very good,” I said. “Here’s what happened. A half hour ago,
there was an explosion in Boston. Two people were killed and seventeen are
injured. (These were the numbers of the time.) The green subway line is closed, but everything else is the
same. No one knows what caused the
explosion.”

One woman did not know the word “explosion” so I explained
it to her with some simple hand gestures and sound effects. I was careful not
to use the word “bomb.”

One of the women was Thai and the other was Khazakh. I
quietly told the Khazakh that she should probably be a little extra careful for a little bit
because since September 11 people blamed Muslims for these sorts of things, but,
I told her, in a week or so we’d probably learn that it was an American who had
done this and they’d probably done it for a reason that was just plain crazy.
(i.e. the “Jody Foster” motive or the motive of the D.C. Sniper or the motive
of the Unabomber or the time Squeaky Fromme tried to shoot Gerald Ford to “test”
his security. Good old American nuttiness in Action.)

The Khazakh woman, a very attractive woman dressed in
stylish clothes, asked how I knew she was a Muslim and I told her that she had
an Islamic name and came from an Islamic country.

Some point around then, perhaps earlier, I received a cell
phone text from a friend asking if I was okay. He’s an Iraq war vet so he
apparently responds quickly to bombings.

Outside the students were milling around and agitated management
staff were trying to inform and calm the
students. (I hate to say it, but in many cases the students were calmer than
the staff trying to calm them.)

I did what I could to help with that and continued
suggesting that students go to the window to compare the hysteria on the TV
with the calm outside in the Boston Commons.

At one point I took a break and sent this e-mail:

“FYI, as some of you may have heard, there was an explosion in
Boston today near the Boston marathon course.

I am fine and had no
interaction with the event, at least not as yet. (I'll skip the jokes about the
likelihood of my actually running in the Boston marathon or not.)

When the event took
place I was teaching in a small ESL school on the Bostom commons. Students took
to watching the TV news (who I think did a terrible job, showing the same five
minutes of clips repeatedly while saying "We do not know the details
yet"). Meanwhile, outside my window everything appeared cool, calm and
collected.

The most dramatic
thing I did was encourage students (who range from age 16 to 36 or so) to take
a break from watching the TV and look out the window where they could see that
the city was functioning normally. I then advised Muslims to be careful but
said that in a few days we will probably learn that this was the work of a
nutty American.

( --why?-- I did not
publically speculate. Some incomprehensible nut reason. Perhaps to protect
rabbits from the cosmetic industry or to show they STILL after all these years
love Jody Foster. We'll see. ) “

Later I received a
text message from a friend with an interest in terrorism who said they were
still finding bombs.

I then sent this one:

“Someone e-mailed me and said "they're still
finding bombs."

My two cents. As an
EMT and general paranoid nut-job I know more about these things than average
(although far less than most experts.)

Often the most
effective "secondary devices" or follow up bombs are saved for when
the fire department and ambulances start to arrive to tend to the wounded. This
leaves the wounded unattended and throws EMS and fire response into
confusion.

This did not
happen.

My guess is that when
the explosion happened many people dropped their back packs and ran away from
the danger area.

Then the bomb squad
came and, instead of dangerously opening the back packs, decided to blow them
up "just in case." I could be wrong but I am not worried about
unexploded bombs (unless whoever did this built a bomb or two that did not
work.)

OTOH, I have no plans
to go anywhere near the danger area.”

Soon after the cell
phones stopped working. I’m uncertain as to if they were overloaded or shut
down by the authorities, I’ve heard both, but they did not work for a time
after the Boston bombing.

Eventually it was time to leave the school and go home. All
the subways were running save for one line (the Green line) so it was a simple
enough thing to get home. The subway had extra staff out monitoring the
platforms and such.

People, as they always are at a time like this, were tense
and nervous but friendly and caring, trying to reach out.

I tend to write several entries on a subject and although admittedly they are of variable quality by following the topic keys then one should get a fairly complete view of what I think on the issue. There's a lot of good information buried here particularly on some obscure subjects related to assisting newly arrived refugees, particularly from Burma. These subjects include furniture donation issues, driver education and even domestic violence. If these issues interest you, follow the internal links, do searches, there's a lot here and I've found that often people search on a subject using google, I've written an answer, but the search engines sent them to some other entry where I discussed only a small part of the issue. So if a subject that interests you has a truly mediocre entry there is probably a good one hidden away as well on different aspects of the same subject You can't get a full picture on the issues covered in this blog by reading just one entry. it wasn't written that way. If you still don't see what you want, feel free to drop me an e-mail. Thank you.

About Me

Journalist, educator, and low level Asian history scholar who dabbles in fiction. Peter Huston is the author of several books, including Scams from the Great Beyond, Tong, Gangs, and Triads,, and the novel, Excess Emotional Baggage.
Interests include :
1) Internatinal Education and Teaching English as a Second or other Language,
2)refugee concerns and refugee resettlement,
3)self defense and martial arts,
4) Asian culture and history,
5) censorship controversies
6) the skeptical examination of paranormal and pseudo-scientific claims.
Education includes a master's degree in East Asian Studies from Cornell and a second master's degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) from the University at Albany, party of the New York State SUNY system.
I am not the sailing guy, sports betting guy or the attorney guy. These people who use the name Peter Huston are, presumably, impostors. I am the real
Peter Huston.